Tuesday, I drove downtown to pick BJ up from work and we stopped by the farmer’s market on campus. We ended up buying a couple of macarons, raspberry marshmallows, and one of my favorite meals this week—polenta with some sort of tomato and cheese from Maison Burdisso. BJ bought baby-back ribs and grilled them up. So delicious. The roasted tomatoes on the polenta reminded me of how my mom prepares them with catfish.

We also were gifted with tickets to New York City for our honeymoon! B’s mom made it all possible, and I’m so excited to do all the things we usually make plans for—when we do go there—but never get the chance to do. No more 10-minute run-throughs in the Met. We’re already setting aside one day for that. (With breaks of course.) Eeek!

Attention, devotees of instant film. We propose that you spend a few minutes poring over Christopher Makos’s SX-70 beauties—or, if you’re in New York, to take in the fifty on display at the Christopher Henry Gallery. Enjoy the brushes with artists, musicians, and disgraced former athletes.

Makos belonged to the scapegrace entourage that loyally shadowed Andy Warhol. A movement that worshiped the moment. With a mix of love and awe, as the Factory’s house photographer, Makos preserved its history in images. Uniquely suited to this task was his Polaroid SX-70. It was portable and hence pass-around-able. It cherished accidents. And it had mood swings. The camera could toss a wintry silence over any scene, making it pale and bluish and still, yet it could also warm it up, plating yellows in gold or lending flat reds an almost bloody vitality. Hunting for the right adjective for this phenomenon, most settle on dreamy. Dreamy because you know you’re eyeing objects that exist in reality, and yet, whether or not you can put a finger on it, something—the cloudy light? the sanded edges? the deathly skin tones?—seems a touch off. Very faintly, in a word, unreal. Cameras were built to record plain-vanilla reality, but the Polaroid seems magically engineered to flavor, spice, season it. To make the familiar subtly unfamiliar. We couldn’t imagine a better way to remember Warhol and his Factory, and those after-hours adventures in the shabby, sincere, wide-eyed world of 1970’s and 1980’s New York.

Quick recap of my/our weekend: looked for places to rent, fell in love with a townhome with rooftop balcony, put in an application, stressed, crossed our fingers, saw Local Natives, listened to LN outside because it was so hot, visited with cute baby cousins, stressed, and dreaded going into work. I’ll be so relieved once things settle down!

We also stopped by Uncommon Objects in Austin and I picked up some vintage photos and lace. The bottom one reminds me of a Lewis Carroll photo. If I had more time and money, I would definitely make a trip back and buy a few industrial lamps and the the boar’s head for BJ! This weekend, we’re going to look for our first place to rent together. Wish us luck!

This Sunday, we drove to Austin to see my cousin finish the ms150 (150 miles in 2 days). I’m so proud of her and of all the old men with huge beer bellies victoriously crossing the line—I don’t know how they do it. We had a really relaxing afternoon with her two kids, saw a lot of cute dogs, and made some awesome purchases on Congress Street. And ate some of the best bar-b-q from Salt Lick. Here’s one of the purchases we came back with:

an old printer’s tray from Off the Wall. There was another one with a more unique handle, but this was a lot sturdier. It has so much potential, and I can’t help but think about this shelf below from Elisabeth Dunker’s blog. I can’t wait to start filling it up!

I’m slowly realizing how important it is to document process and keep a journal during these first years of teaching. We’re currently working on jewelry and the only ones breaking drill bits are boys. Too aggressive :)

It’s been a busy last couple of weeks for us, and there are lots more big decisions to make soon. We finally got our invites printed and they’re almost all out in the mail. Finally! BJ did all the lettering—his middle-school calligraphy lessons definitely (BJ: “finally”) came in handy! And the front was made with scanned paper cuts. More details soon once I find the files.

In other news, Lost is getting so good and I’ve been drinking one can of Coke a day. Sigh.

I woke up at 5:50am Saturday morning in a cussing storm because I’d slept through one alarm. And I was laying on my cell phone so that itsalarm would have awakened me if my back hadn’t been pressing snooze! Luckily, I live super-close to work so I was just a few minutes late to leave for our state art competition. This is the mayhem that went on all day:

This year 2,000 of 24,000 pieces submitted advanced to state. It’s always a little odd for me when I go to this event because not too long ago my friends and I were here running around the campus and nervously awaiting our results. Some of my best memories from high school took place here.

A lot has changed within those few years—mainly how people view the student exhibit. Back then, teachers would take photos of other work to show their classes and people walked slowly through the exhibition. Now, 9 out of ten people had a camera and you can barely stand and enjoy a work because you’re in someone’s camera view. Many took pictures of almost every single piece. Now, I understand that inspiration and looking at other artist is an important part of creating a piece, but there was something off about how snap happy everyone was and the pace at which they were consuming the art. I’m not sure how I feel about it.

I was a proud teacher that day though—4 out of 5 got the highest possible rating. And the one other student missed it by only one point. One!!!

Today called for some brightness and I think these pieces did the trick. My kiddos cracked me up with their stop motion storyboards and BJ made me an awesome salad for dinner (I had five bowls). Today was pretty good.